The New Caledonian crow is the only non-human animal known to craft hooked tools in the wild, but the ecological benefit of these relatively complex tools remains unknown. Here, we show that crows acquire food several times faster when using hooked rather than non-hooked tools, regardless of tool material, prey type and extraction context. This implies that small changes to tool shape can strongly affect energy-intake rates, highlighting a powerful driver for technological advancement.

The oldest examples of human designed hooks are from about 23,000 years ago in Japan using sea snail shells. In just 1000 generations, give or take, we went from fish-hooks to Moon landings. Beware, the corvids!